The present invention relates generally to the field of telecommunications and in particular to an optical router particularly well suited for use in internetworking, e.g, Internet Protocol (IP) networks.
The exponential growth of the Internet has generated tremendous demand for new and highly efficient internetworking components. Components of particular importance to internetworking are routersxe2x80x94devices which route traffic from network to network as appropriate.
Current generation routers are electronic devices whose capacity to route traffic is rapidly being approached. Consequently, enormous interest is being shown in optical routing in the belief that optical routers will provide a capacity and performance suitable to support the growing volume of Internet traffic. We present herein a novel, optical internetwork router.
We have developed an optical router that utilizes an Nxc3x97N optical frequency router and N fast transmitters including N fast, tunable lasers and N fast modulators. Routing is performed by determining an intended destination for packets to be routed, appropriately xe2x80x9ccoloringxe2x80x9d the packets in a destination-specific manner, and then transmitting the colored packets through the frequency router wherein it is routed to a desired destination. Unlike prior art routing methods and apparatus, the routing is performed according to color or frequency of the packet, and not by address.